Resistance - J.M. Dillard [22]
In the end, Worf had aborted the mission and returned to save her. Beverly had found the fact touching, despite the fact that Worf had failed in his duty. She had asked herself: If Jean-Luc were dying, would I be able to turn my back on him, even if I had direct orders to do so? Would I be able to leave him to die?
Softly, she asked, “Does this have anything to do with Jadzia?”
He drew in a startled, silent breath and blinked rapidly, then his expression turned to stone. She’d hit a nerve—the nerve.
“I do not want to discuss it,” he answered stiffly.
She had pushed too far; the wound was still too tender. Yet she had to do something to salvage the situation.
“The past is the past, Worf,” Beverly said, hoping her words did not come across as trite. “We can’t change it. But we can change. And it’s clear to me that you would change what happened, if you could.” She paused. “You’re the best possible candidate for the position. The captain needs you.”
His expression softened slightly; she was making an impression. “There are others just as qualified,” he said, but all the vehemence had left his tone. “I will remain until a replacement can be found.”
“Tell me,” Beverly said, “if you were on a Klingon vessel, what would your job be, as second-in-command?”
The question took him by surprise. “To support the captain totally, of course. So long as he does not endanger the crew.”
She gave a single, emphatic nod. “That’s all you have to do, Worf. You don’t have to dwell on the past, or punish yourself for it by denying the captain the first officer he deserves. Just be Klingon for him.”
He lifted his bronze face and finally met her gaze directly. His eyes still bore lingering doubt, but he was considering very carefully what she had just said.
She was about to dismiss him with that thought when—at the same time that she heard the doors to sickbay slide open behind her—Worf’s eyes grew round with alarm. He moved past her, toward the doors.
“Captain!”
She turned. Behind her, she saw an ashen apparition bracing itself in the doorway to keep from falling: Jean-Luc, his face pale and glittering with sweat, his mouth slack, his eyes wide and vacant, emptied of his shrewd intelligence. In its place was something else…another consciousness, cold, mindless, and mechanical, a consciousness that filled Beverly with dread, for she had seen it in his eyes many, many years before…
She cried out his name, but he was beyond recognizing it—beyond recognizing her or Worf, as they seized his arms and took him over to a diagnostic bed.
He would not lie still, thrashing like a man in the throes of a fever. Worf held him carefully in place while Beverly frantically raced to get a reading.
Nothing abnormal in the standard scans…but something was terribly, terribly wrong. She frowned at the diagnostic panel, but her attention was forced away from it by the haunting sound of a single voice that seemed to combine a thousand whispers. It was a voice she knew and had hoped never to hear again: the voice of the Borg.
And Jean-Luc’s lips were forming the words.
A queen…We are birthing a new queen…
4
THE EPISODE LASTED NO MORE THAN A MINUTE, but to Beverly, it seemed to continue for an infinite length of time because there was nothing she could do to stop it, no medical help she could render to ease the horror of what Jean-Luc was enduring. There was no point in sedating him; whatever he—or rather, the Borg—said might be helpful.
It ended dramatically. One instant, Beverly was staring down into the blank yet driven gaze of the Borg, listening to the faint, eerie chorus of many voices joined into one. The next, she was gazing into the eyes of the man she knew as Jean-Luc Picard, who was abruptly silent.
He fell, limp, against the bed, exhausted by the wave that had overcome him. For several seconds, he lay panting until at last he caught his breath and said, “I heard it. Every word that I spoke…And all of it is true.”
Beverly